Early social activism

Anthony embarked on her career of social reform with energy and determination. Schooling herself in reform issues, she found herself drawn to the more radical ideas of people like William Lloyd Garrison, George Thompson and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Soon she was wearing the controversial Bloomer dress, consisting of pantaloons worn under a knee-length dress. Although she felt it was more sensible than the traditional heavy dresses that dragged the ground, she reluctantly quit wearing it after a year because it gave her opponents the opportunity to focus on her apparel rather than her ideas.^[22]

Partnership with Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

In 1851, Anthony was introduced to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who had been one of the organizers of the Seneca Falls Convention and had introduced the controversial resolution in support of women's suffrage. Anthony and Stanton were introduced by Amelia Bloomer, a feminist and mutual acquaintance. Anthony and Stanton soon became close friends and co-workers, forming a relationship that was pivotal for them and for the women's movement as a whole.^[23] After the Stantons moved from Seneca Falls to New York City in 1861, a room was set aside for Anthony in every house they lived in.^[24] One of Stanton's biographers estimated that over her lifetime, Stanton probably spent more time with Anthony than with any other adult, including her own husband.^[25]

The two women had complementary skills. Anthony excelled at organizing, while Stanton had an aptitude for intellectual matters and writing. Anthony was dissatisfied with her own writing ability and wrote relatively little for publication. When historians illustrate her thoughts with direct quotes, they usually take them from her speeches, letters, and diary entries.^[26]

Because Stanton was homebound with seven children while Anthony was unmarried and free to travel, Anthony assisted Stanton by supervising her children while Stanton wrote. One of Anthony's biographers said, "Susan became one of the family and was almost another mother to Mrs. Stanton's children."^[27] A biography of Stanton says that during the early years of their relationship, "Stanton provided the ideas, rhetoric, and strategy; Anthony delivered the speeches, circulated petitions, and rented the halls. Anthony prodded and Stanton produced."^[28] Stanton's husband said, "Susan stirred the puddings, Elizabeth stirred up Susan, and then Susan stirs up the world!"^[29] Stanton herself said, "I forged the thunderbolts, she fired them."^[30] By 1854, Anthony and Stanton "had perfected a collaboration that made the New York State movement the most sophisticated in the country", according to Ann D. Gordon, a professor of women's history.^[31]

Anti-slavery activities

In 1837, at age 16, Anthony collected petitions against slavery as part of organized resistance to the newly established gag rule that prohibited anti-slavery petitions in the U.S. House of Representatives.^[52] In 1851, she played a key role in organizing an anti-slavery convention in Rochester.^[53] She was also part of the Underground Railroad. An entry in her diary in 1861 read, "Fitted out a fugitive slave for Canada with the help of Harriet Tubman."^[54]

Susan B. Anthony

In 1856, Anthony agreed to become the New York State agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society with the understanding that she would also continue her advocacy of women's rights.^[55] Anthony organized anti-slavery meetings throughout the state under banners that read "No compromise with slaveholders. Immediate and Unconditional Emancipation."^[56]

In 1859, John Brown was executed for leading a violent raid on the U.S. arsenal at Harper's Ferry in what was intended to be the beginning of an armed slave uprising. Anthony organized and presided over a meeting of "mourning and indignation" in Rochester's Corinthian Hall on the day of his execution to raise money for Brown's family.^[57]

She developed a reputation for fearlessness in facing down attempts to disrupt her meetings, but opposition became overwhelming on the eve of the Civil War. Mob action shut down her meetings in every town from Buffalo to Albany in early 1861. In Rochester, the police had to escort Anthony and other speakers from the building for their own safety.^[58] In Syracuse, according to a local newspaper, "Rotten eggs were thrown, benches broken, and knives and pistols gleamed in every direction."^[59]

Anthony expressed a vision of a racially integrated society that was radical for a time when abolitionists were debating the question of what was to become of the slaves after they were freed, and when people like Abraham Lincoln were calling for African Americans to be shipped to newly established colonies in Africa. In a speech in 1861, Anthony said, "Let us open to the colored man all our schools ... Let us admit him into all our mechanic shops, stores, offices, and lucrative business avocations ... let him rent such pew in the church, and occupy such seat in the theatre ... Extend to him all the rights of Citizenship."^[60]

The relatively small women's rights movement of that time was closely associated with the American Anti-Slavery Society led by William Lloyd Garrison. The women's movement depended heavily on abolitionist resources, with its articles published in their newspapers and some of its funding provided by abolitionists.^[61] There was tension, however, between leaders of the women's movement and male abolitionists who, although supporters of increased women's rights, believed that a vigorous campaign for women's rights would interfere with the campaign against slavery. In 1860, when Anthony sheltered a woman who had fled an abusive husband, Garrison insisted that the woman give up the child she had brought with her, pointing out that the law gave husbands complete control of children. Anthony reminded Garrison that he helped slaves escape to Canada in violation of the law and said, "Well, the law which gives the father ownership of the children is just as wicked and I'll break it just as quickly."^[62]

When Stanton introduced a resolution at the National Woman's Rights Convention in 1860 favoring more lenient divorce laws, leading abolitionist Wendell Phillips not only opposed it but attempted to have it removed from the record.^[63] When Stanton, Anthony, and others supported a bill before the New York legislature that would permit divorce in cases of desertion or inhuman treatment, Horace Greeley, an abolitionist newspaper publisher, campaigned against it in the pages of his newspaper.^[64]

Garrison, Phillips and Greeley had all provided valuable help to the women's movement. In a letter to Lucy Stone, Anthony said, "The Men, even the best of them, seem to think the Women's Rights question should be waived for the present. So let us do our own work, and in our own way."^[65]

On February 13, 1928, Representative Charles Hillyer Brand gave a "brief statement of the life and activities" of Anthony—partly titled "militant suffragist"—in which he noted that in 1861, Anthony was "persuaded to give up preparations for the annual women's rights convention to concentrate on work to win the war, though she was not misled by the sophistry that the rights of women would be recognized after the war if they helped to end it."^[66]

Women's Loyal National League

Anthony and Stanton organized the Women's Loyal National League in 1863 to campaign for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would abolish slavery. It was the first national women's political organization in the United States.^[67] In the largest petition drive in the nation's history up to that time, the League collected nearly 400,000 signatures to abolish slavery, representing approximately one out of every twenty-four adults in the Northern states.^[68] The petition drive significantly assisted the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended slavery. Anthony was the chief organizer of this effort, which involved recruiting and coordinating some 2000 petition collectors.^[69]

The League provided the women's movement with a vehicle for combining the fight against slavery with the fight for women's rights by reminding the public that petitioning was the only political tool available to women at a time when only men were allowed to vote.^[70] With a membership of 5000, it helped develop a new generation of women leaders, providing experience and recognition for not only Stanton and Anthony but also newcomers like Anna Dickinson, a gifted teenaged orator.^[71] The League demonstrated the value of formal structure to a women's movement that had resisted being anything other than loosely organized up to that point.^[72] The widespread network of women activists who assisted the League expanded the pool of talent that was available to reform movements, including the women's suffrage movement, after the war.^[73]

American Equal Rights Association

Anthony stayed with her brother Daniel in Kansas for eight months in 1865 to assist with his newspaper. She headed back east after she learned that an amendment to the U.S. Constitution had been proposed that would provide citizenship for African Americans but would also for the first time introduce the word "male" into the constitution.^[74] Anthony supported citizenship for blacks but opposed any attempt to link it with a reduction in the status of women. Her ally Stanton agreed, saying "if that word 'male' be inserted, it will take us a century at least to get it out."^[75]

Anthony and Stanton worked to revive the women's rights movement, which had become nearly dormant during the Civil War. In 1866, they organized the Eleventh National Women's Rights Convention, the first since the Civil War began.^[76] Unanimously adopting a resolution introduced by Anthony, the convention voted to transform itself into the American Equal Rights Association (AERA), whose purpose was to campaign for the equal rights of all citizens, especially the right of suffrage.^[77] The leadership of the new organization included such prominent activists as Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, and Frederick Douglass.^[78]

The AERA's drive for universal suffrage was resisted by some abolitionist leaders and their allies in the Republican Party. During the period before the 1867 convention to revise the New York state constitution, Horace Greeley, a prominent newspaper editor, told Anthony and Stanton, "This is a critical period for the Republican Party and the life of our Nation... I conjure you to remember that this is 'the negro's hour,' and your first duty now is to go through the State and plead his claims."^[79] Abolitionist leaders Wendell Phillips and Theodore Tilton met with Anthony and Stanton in the office of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, a leading abolitionist newspaper. The two men tried to convince the two women that the time had not yet come for women's suffrage, that they should campaign not for voting rights for both women and African Americans in the revised state constitution but for voting rights for black men only. According to Ida Husted Harper, Anthony's authorized biographer, Anthony "was highly indignant and declared that she would sooner cut off her right hand than ask the ballot for the black man and not for woman."^[80] Anthony and Stanton continued to work for the inclusion of suffrage for both African Americans and women.

In 1867, the AERA campaigned in Kansas for referendums that would enfranchise both African Americans and women. Wendell Phillips, who opposed mixing those two causes, blocked the funding that the AERA had expected for their campaign.^[81] After an internal struggle, Kansas Republicans decided to support suffrage for black men only and formed an "Anti Female Suffrage Committee" to oppose the AERA's efforts.^[82] By the end of summer, the AERA campaign had almost collapsed, and its finances were exhausted. Anthony and Stanton created a storm of controversy by accepting help during the last days of the campaign from George Francis Train, a wealthy businessman who supported women's rights. Train antagonized many activists by attacking the Republican Party and openly disparaging the integrity and intelligence of African Americans.^[83] There is reason to believe, however, that Anthony and Stanton hoped to draw the volatile Train away from his cruder forms of racism, and that he had actually begun to do so.^[84]

After the Kansas campaign, the AERA increasingly divided into two wings, both advocating universal suffrage but with different approaches. One wing, whose leading figure was Lucy Stone, was willing for black men to achieve suffrage first and wanted to maintain close ties with the Republican Party and the abolitionist movement. The other, whose leading figures were Anthony and Stanton, insisted that women and black men should be enfranchised at the same time and worked toward a politically independent women's movement that would no longer be dependent on abolitionists.^[85] The AERA effectively dissolved after an acrimonious meeting in May 1869, and two competing woman suffrage organizations were created in its aftermath.^[86]

The Revolution

Anthony and Stanton began publishing a weekly newspaper called The Revolution in New York City in 1868. It focused primarily on women's rights, especially suffrage for women, but it also covered other topics, including politics, the labor movement and finance. Its motto was "Men, their rights and nothing more: women, their rights and nothing less."^[87] One of its goals was to provide a forum in which women could exchange opinions on key issues from a variety of viewpoints. Anthony managed the business aspects of the paper while Stanton was co-editor along with Parker Pillsbury, an abolitionist and a supporter of women's rights. Initial funding was provided by George Francis Train, the controversial businessman who supported women's rights but who alienated many activists with his political and racial views.^[88]

Printing House Square in Manhattan in 1868, showing the sign for The Revolution's office at the far right below The World and above Scientific American.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, major periodicals associated with the radical social reform movements had either become more conservative or had quit publishing or soon would.^[89] Anthony intended for The Revolution to partially fill that void, hoping to grow it eventually into a daily paper with its own printing press, all owned and operated by women.^[90] The funding Train had arranged for the newspaper, however, was less than Anthony had expected. Moreover, Train sailed for England after The Revolution published its first issue and was soon jailed for supporting Irish independence.^[91]

Train's financial support eventually disappeared entirely. After twenty-nine months, mounting debts forced Anthony to transfer the paper to Laura Curtis Bullard, a wealthy women's rights activist who gave it a less radical tone. The paper published its last issue less than two years later.^[88] Despite its short life, The Revolution gave Anthony and Stanton a means for expressing their views during the developing split within the women's movement. It also helped them promote their wing of the movement, which eventually became a separate organization.^[92]

Attempted alliance with labor

The National Labor Union (NLU), which was formed in 1866, began reaching out to farmers, African Americans and women, with the intention of forming a broad-based political party.^[93] The Revolution responded enthusiastically, declaring, "The principles of the National Labor Union are our principles."^[94] It predicted that "The producers—the working-men, the women, the negroes—are destined to form a triple power that shall speedily wrest the sceptre of government from the non-producers—the land monopolists, the bond-holders, the politicians."^[95] Anthony and Stanton were seated as delegates to the NLU Congress in 1868, with Anthony representing the Working Women's Association (WWA), which had recently been formed in the offices of The Revolution.^[96]

The attempted alliance did not last long. During a printers' strike in 1869, Anthony voiced approval of an employer-sponsored training program that would teach women skills that would enable them in effect to replace the strikers. Anthony viewed the program as an opportunity to increase employment of women in a trade from which women were often excluded by both employers and unions. At the next NLU Congress, Anthony was first seated as a delegate but then unseated because of strong opposition from those who accused her of supporting strikebreakers.^[97]

Anthony worked with the WWA to form all-female labor unions, but with little success. She accomplished more in her work with the joint campaign by the WWA and The Revolution to win a pardon for Hester Vaughn, a domestic worker who had been found guilty of infanticide and sentenced to death. Charging that the social and legal systems treated women unfairly, the WWA petitioned, organized a mass meeting at which Anthony was one of the speakers, and sent delegations to visit Vaughn in prison and to speak with the governor. Vaughn was eventually pardoned.^[98]

Originally with a membership that included over a hundred wage-earning women, the WWA evolved into an organization consisting almost entirely of journalists, doctors and other middle-class working women. Its members formed the core of the New York City portion of the new national suffrage organization that Anthony and Stanton were in the process of forming.^[99]

Split in the women's movement

Susan B. Anthony, 1870

In May 1869, two days after the final AERA convention, Anthony, Stanton and others formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). In November 1869, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe and others formed the competing American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). The hostile nature of their rivalry created a partisan atmosphere that endured for decades, affecting even professional historians of the women's movement.^[100]

The immediate cause for the split was the proposed Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would prohibit the denial of suffrage because of race. In one of her most controversial actions, Anthony campaigned against the amendment. She and Stanton called for women and African Americans to be enfranchised at the same time. They said that by effectively enfranchising all men while excluding all women, the amendment would create an "aristocracy of sex" by giving constitutional authority to the idea that men were superior to women.^[101] In 1873, Anthony said, "An oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor; an oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant; or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but surely this oligarchy of sex, which makes the men of every household sovereigns, masters; the women subjects, slaves; carrying dissension, rebellion into every home of the Nation, cannot be endured."^[102]

The AWSA supported the amendment, but Lucy Stone, who became its most prominent leader, also made it clear that she believed that suffrage for women would be more beneficial to the country than suffrage for black men.^[103]

The two organizations had other differences as well. The NWSA was politically independent, but the AWSA at least initially aimed for close ties with the Republican Party, hoping that the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment would lead to a Republican push for women's suffrage. The NWSA focused primarily on winning suffrage at the national level while the AWSA pursued a state-by-state strategy. The NWSA initially worked on a wider range of women's issues than the AWSA, including divorce reform and equal pay for women.^[104]

Events soon removed much of the basis for the split in the women's movement. In 1870, debate about the Fifteenth Amendment was made irrelevant when that amendment was officially ratified. In 1872, disgust with corruption in government led to a mass defection of abolitionists and other social reformers from the Republicans to the short-lived Liberal Republican Party.^[105] As early as 1875, Anthony began urging the NWSA to focus more exclusively on women's suffrage rather than a variety of women's issues.^[106] The rivalry between the two women's groups was so bitter, however, that a merger proved to be impossible for twenty years. The AWSA, which was especially strong in New England, was the larger of the two organizations, but it began to decline in strength during the 1880s.^[107] In 1890, the two organizations merged as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), with Stanton as president but with Anthony as its effective leader. When Stanton retired from her post in 1892, Anthony became NAWSA's president.^[108]

National suffrage movement

Letter by Susan B. Anthony to US Congress in favor of Women's Suffrage

"By the end of the Civil War," according to historian Ann D. Gordon, "Susan B. Anthony occupied new social and political territory. She was emerging on the national scene as a female leader, something new in American history, and she did so as a single woman in a culture that perceived the spinster as anomalous and unguarded ... By the 1880s, she was among the senior political figures in the United States."^[109]

After the formation of the NWSA, Anthony dedicated herself fully to the organization and to women's suffrage. She did not draw a salary from either it or its successor, the NAWSA, but on the contrary used her lecture fees to fund those organizations.^[110] There was no national office, the mailing address being simply that of one of the officers.^[111]

That Anthony had remained unmarried gave her an important business advantage in this work. A married woman at that time had the legal status of feme covert, which, among other things, excluded her from signing contracts (her husband could do that for her, if he chose). As Anthony had no husband, she was a feme sole and could freely sign contracts for convention halls, printed materials, etc.^[112] Using fees she earned by lecturing, she paid off the debts she had accumulated while supporting The Revolution. With the press treating her as a celebrity, she proved to be a major draw.^[113] Over her career she estimated that she averaged 75 to 100 speeches per year. Travel conditions in the earlier days were sometimes appalling. Once she gave a speech from the top of a billiard table. On another occasion her train was snowbound for days, and she survived on crackers and dried fish.^[114]

Both Anthony and Stanton joined the lecture circuit about 1870, usually traveling from mid-autumn to spring. The timing was right because the nation was beginning to discuss women's suffrage as a serious matter. Occasionally they traveled together but most often not. Lecture bureaus scheduled their tours and handled the travel arrangements, which generally involved traveling during the day and speaking at night, sometimes for weeks at a time, including weekends. Their lectures brought new recruits into the movement who strengthened suffrage organizations at the local, state and national levels. Their journeys during that decade covered a distance that was unmatched by any other reformer or politician.^[115] Anthony's other suffrage work included organizing national conventions, lobbying Congress and state legislatures, and participating in a seemingly endless series of state suffrage campaigns.

A special opportunity arose in 1876 when the U.S. celebrated its 100th birthday as an independent country. The NWSA asked permission to present a Declaration of Rights for Women at the official ceremony in Philadelphia, but was refused. Undaunted, five women, headed by Anthony, walked onto the platform during the ceremony and handed their Declaration to the startled official in charge. As they left, they handed out copies of it to the crowd. Spotting an unoccupied bandstand outside the hall, Anthony mounted it and read the Declaration to a large crowd. Afterwards she invited everyone to a NWSA convention at the nearby Unitarian church where speakers like Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton awaited them.^[116][117]

The work of all segments of the women's suffrage movement began to show clear results. Women won the right to vote in Wyoming in 1869 and in Utah in 1870. Her lectures in Washington and four other states led directly to invitations for her to address the state legislatures there.^[115]

The Grange, a large advocacy group for farmers, officially supported women's suffrage as early as 1885. The Women's Christian Temperance Union, the largest women's organization in the country, also supported suffrage.^[118]

Anthony's commitment to the movement, her spartan lifestyle, and the fact that she did not seek personal financial gain, made her an effective fund-raiser and won her the admiration of many who did not agree with her goals.^[110] As her reputation grew, her working and travel conditions improved. She sometimes had the use of the private railroad car of Jane Stanford, a sympathizer whose husband owned a major railroad. While lobbying and preparing for the annual suffrage conventions in Washington, she was provided with a free suite of rooms in the Riggs Hotel, whose owners supported her work.^[119]

To ensure continuity, Anthony trained a group of younger activists, who were known as her "nieces," to assume leadership roles within the organization. Two of them, Carrie Chapman Catt and Anna Howard Shaw, served as presidents of the NAWSA after Anthony retired from that position.^[120]

History of Woman Suffrage

Cover of Life magazine in 1913. Titled "Ancient History", it shows an Anthony-like figure in classical dress leading a protest for women's rights

Anthony and Stanton initiated the project of writing a history of the women's suffrage movement in 1876. Anthony had for years saved letters, newspaper clippings, and other materials of historical value to the women's movement. In 1876, she moved into the Stanton household in New Jersey along with several trunks and boxes of these materials to begin working with Stanton on the History of Woman Suffrage.^[137]

Anthony hated this type of work. In her letters, she said the project "makes me feel growly all the time ... No warhorse ever panted for the rush of battle more than I for outside work. I love to make history but hate to write it."^[138] The work absorbed much of her time for several years although she continued to work on other women's suffrage activities. She acted as her own publisher, which presented several problems, including finding space for the inventory. She was forced to limit the number of books she was storing in the attic of her sister's house because the weight was threatening to collapse the structure.^[139]

Originally envisioned as a modest publication that could be produced quickly,^[140] the history evolved into a six-volume work of more than 5700 pages written over a period of 41 years. The first three volumes, which cover the movement up to 1885, were published between 1881 and 1886 and were produced by Stanton, Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage. Anthony handled the production details and the extensive correspondence with contributors. Anthony published Volume 4, which covers the period from 1883 to 1900, in 1902, after Stanton's death, with the help of Ida Husted Harper, Anthony's designated biographer. The last two volumes, which bring the history up to 1920, were completed in 1922 by Harper after Anthony's death.

The History of Woman Suffrage preserves an enormous amount of material that might have been lost forever. Written by leaders of one wing of the divided women's movement (Lucy Stone, their main rival, refused to have anything to do with the project), it does not, however, give a balanced view of events where their rivals are concerned. It overstates the role of Anthony and Stanton, and it understates or ignores the roles of Stone and other activists who did not fit into the historical narrative that Anthony and Stanton developed. Because it was for years the main source of documentation about the suffrage movement, historians have had to uncover other sources to provide a more balanced view.^[141][142]

International women's organizations

World's Congress of Representative Women

Woman's Building at the World's Columbian Exposition

The World's Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair, was held in 1893. It hosted several world congresses, each dealing with a specialized topic, such as religion, medicine and science.^[147] At almost the last moment, the U.S. Congress decided that the Exposition should also recognize the role of women. After it was over, one of the organizers of the Exposition's congress of women revealed that Anthony had played a pivotal but hidden role in that last-minute decision. Fearing that a public campaign would rouse opposition, Anthony had worked quietly to organize support for this project among women of the political elite. Anthony increased the pressure by covertly initiating a petition that was signed by wives and daughters of Supreme Court judges, senators, cabinet members and other dignitaries.^[148]

A large structure called the Woman's Building, designed by Sophia Hayden Bennett, was constructed to provide meeting and exhibition spaces for women at the Exposition. Two of Anthony's closest associates were appointed to organize the women's congress. They arranged for the International Council of Women to make its upcoming meeting part of the Exposition by expanding its scope and calling itself the World's Congress of Representative Women.^[149] This week-long congress seated delegates from 27 countries. Its 81 sessions, many held simultaneously, were attended by over 150,000 people, and women's suffrage was discussed at almost every session.^[150] Anthony spoke to large crowds at the Exposition.^[151]

"Buffalo Bill" Cody invited her as a guest to his Wild West Show, located just outside the Exposition.^[152] When the show opened, he rode his horse directly to her and greeted her with dramatic flair. According to a co-worker, Anthony, "for the moment as enthusiastic as a girl, waved her handkerchief at him, while the big audience, catching the spirit of the scene, wildly applauded."^[153]

Changing relationship with Stanton

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (sitting) with Anthony

Anthony and Stanton worked together in a close and productive relationship. From 1880 to 1886, they were together almost every day working on the History of Woman Suffrage.^[157] They referred to each other as "Susan" and "Mrs. Stanton".^[158] Anthony deferred to Stanton in other ways also, not accepting an office in any organization that would place her above Stanton.^[159] In practice this generally meant that Anthony, although ostensibly holding a less important office, handled most of the organization's daily activities.^[160] Stanton sometimes felt the weight of Anthony's determination and drive. When Stanton arrived at an important meeting in 1888 with her speech not yet written, Anthony insisted that Stanton stay in her hotel room until she had written it, and she placed a younger colleague outside her door to make sure she did so.^[161] At Anthony's 70th birthday celebration, Stanton teased her by saying, "Well, as all women are supposed to be under the thumb of some man, I prefer a tyrant of my own sex, so I shall not deny the patent fact of my subjection."^[162]

Their interests began to diverge somewhat as they grew older. As the drive for women's suffrage gained momentum, Anthony began to form alliances with more conservative groups, such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the nation's largest women's organization and a supporter of women's suffrage.^[163] Such moves irritated Stanton, who said, "I get more radical as I get older, while she seems to grow more conservative."^[164] In 1895 Stanton published The Woman's Bible, which attacked the use of the Bible to relegate women to an inferior status. It became a highly controversial best-seller. The NAWSA voted to disavow any connection with it despite Anthony's strong objection that such a move was unnecessary and hurtful.^[165] Even so, Anthony refused to assist with the book's preparation, telling Stanton: "You say 'women must be emancipated from their superstitions before enfranchisement will have any benefit,' and I say just the reverse, that women must be enfranchised before they can be emancipated from their superstitions."^[166] Despite such friction, their relationship continued to be close. When Stanton died in 1902, Anthony wrote to a friend: "Oh, this awful hush! It seems impossible that voice is stilled which I have loved to hear for fifty years. Always I have felt I must have Mrs. Stanton's opinion of things before I knew where I stood myself. I am all at sea..."^[167]

Later life

The house that Susan B. Anthony shared with her sister in Rochester. She was arrested here for voting.

Having lived for years in hotels and with friends and relatives, Anthony agreed to settle into her sister Mary Stafford Anthony's house in Rochester in 1891, at the age of 71.^[168] Her energy and stamina, which sometimes exhausted her co-workers, continued at a remarkable level. At age 75, she toured Yosemite National Park on the back of a mule.^[169]

She remained as leader of the NAWSA and continued to travel extensively on suffrage work. She also engaged in local projects. In 1893, she initiated the Rochester branch of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union.^[170] In 1898, she called a meeting of 73 local women's societies to form the Rochester Council of Women. She played a key role in raising the funds required by the University of Rochester before they would admit women students, pledging her life insurance policy to close the final funding gap.^[171]

In 1896, she spent eight months on the California suffrage campaign, speaking as many as three times per day in more than 30 localities. In 1900, she presided over her last NAWSA convention. During the six remaining years of her life, Anthony spoke at six more NAWSA conventions and four congressional hearings, completed the fourth volume of the History of Woman Suffrage, and traveled to eighteen states and to Europe.^[172] As Anthony's fame grew, some politicians (certainly not all of them) were happy to be publicly associated with her. Her seventieth birthday was celebrated at a national event in Washington with prominent members of the House and Senate in attendance.^[173] Her eightieth birthday was celebrated at the White House at the invitation of President William McKinley.^[174]

Views on religion

Anthony was raised a Quaker, but her religious heritage was mixed. On her mother's side, her grandmother was a Baptist and her grandfather was a Universalist.^[192] Her father was a radical Quaker who chafed under the restrictions of his more conservative congregation. When the Quakers split in the late 1820s into Orthodox and Hicksites, her family sided with the Hicksites, which Anthony described as "the radical side, the Unitarian".^[193][194]

In 1848, three years after the Anthony family moved to Rochester, a group of about 200 Quakers withdrew from the Hicksite organization in western New York, partly because they wanted to work in social reform movements without interference from that organization.^[195] Some of them, including the Anthony family, began attending services at the First Unitarian Church of Rochester. When Susan B. Anthony returned home from teaching in 1849, she joined her family in attending services there, and she remained with the Rochester Unitarians for the rest of her life.^[196] Her sense of spirituality was strongly influenced by William Henry Channing,^[197] a nationally known minister of that church who also assisted her with several of her reform projects.^[198] Anthony was listed as a member of First Unitarian in a church history written in 1881.^[199]

Anthony, proud of her Quaker roots, continued to describe herself as a Quaker, however. She maintained her membership in the local Hicksite body but did not attend its meetings.^[200] She joined the Congregational Friends, an organization that was created by Quakers in western New York after the 1848 split among Quakers there. This group soon ceased to operate as a religious body, however, and changed its name to the Friends of Human Progress, organizing annual meetings in support of social reform that welcomed everyone, including "Christians, Jews, Mahammedans, and Pagans".^{[201] [202]} Anthony served as secretary of this group in 1857.^[200]

In 1859, during a period when Rochester Unitarians were gravely impaired by factionalism,^[199] Anthony unsuccessfully attempted to start a "Free church in Rochester ... where no doctrines should be preached and all should be welcome."^[203] She used as her model the Boston church of Theodore Parker, a Unitarian minister who helped to set the direction of his denomination by rejecting the authority of the Bible and the validity of miracles.^[204] Anthony later became close friends with William Channing Gannett, who became the minister of the Unitarian Church in Rochester in 1889, and with his wife Mary, who came from a Quaker background.^[205] William had been a national leader of the successful movement within the Unitarian denomination to end the practice of binding it by a formal creed, thereby opening its membership to non-Christians and even non-theists, a goal for the denomination that resembled Anthony's goal for her proposed Free church.^[206]

After Anthony reduced her arduous travel schedule and made her home in Rochester in 1891, she resumed regular attendance at First Unitarian and also worked with the Gannetts on local reform projects. Her sister Mary Stafford Anthony, whose home had provided a resting place for Anthony during her years of frequent travel, had long played an active role in this church.^[207]

Her first public speech, delivered at a temperance meeting as a young woman, contained frequent references to God.^[208] She soon took a more distant approach, however. While in Europe in 1883, Anthony helped a desperately poor Irish mother of six children. Noting that "the evidences were that 'God' was about to add a No. 7 to her flock", she later commented, "What a dreadful creature their God must be to keep sending hungry mouths while he withholds the bread to fill them!"^[209]

Elizabeth Cady Stanton said that Anthony was an agnostic, adding, "To her, work is worship ... Her belief is not orthodox, but it is religious."^[210] Anthony herself said, "Work and worship are one with me. I can not imagine a God of the universe made happy by my getting down on my knees and calling him 'great.'"^[211] When Anthony's sister Hannah was on her death bed, she asked Susan to talk about the great beyond, but, Anthony later wrote, "I could not dash her faith with my doubts, nor could I pretend a faith I had not; so I was silent in the dread presence of death."^[212]

When an organization offered to sponsor a women's rights convention on the condition that "no speaker should say anything which would seem like an attack on Christianity", Anthony wrote to a friend, "I wonder if they'll be as particular to warn all other speakers not to say anything which shall sound like an attack on liberal religion. They never seem to think we have any feelings to be hurt when we have to sit under their reiteration of orthodox cant and dogma."^[213]

Views on marriage

Susan B. Anthony

As a teen, Anthony went to parties, and she had offers of marriage when she was older, but there is no record of her ever having a serious romance.^[214] Anthony loved children, however, and helped raise the children in the Stanton household.^[27] Referring to her niece, she wrote, "The dear little Lucy engrosses most of my time and thoughts. A child one loves is a constant benediction to the soul, whether or not it helps to the accomplishment of great intellectual feats."^[215]

As a young worker in the women's rights movement, Anthony expressed frustration when some of her co-workers began to marry and have children, sharply curtailing their ability to work for the understaffed movement. When Lucy Stone abandoned her pledge to stay single, Anthony's scolding remarks caused a temporary rupture in their friendship.^[216] Journalists repeatedly asked Anthony to explain why she never married. She answered one by saying, "It always happened that the men I wanted were those I could not get, and those who wanted me I wouldn't have."^[217] To another, she answered, "I never found the man who was necessary to my happiness. I was very well as I was."^[218] To a third she said, "I never felt I could give up my life of freedom to become a man's housekeeper. When I was young, if a girl married poor, she became a housekeeper and a drudge. If she married wealth she became a pet and a doll. Just think, had I married at twenty, I would have been a drudge or a doll for fifty-nine years. Think of it!"^[211]

Anthony fiercely opposed laws that gave husbands complete control over the marriage. Blackstone's Commentaries, the basis for the legal systems in most states at that time, stated that, "By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage".^[219]

In a speech in 1877, Anthony predicted "an epoch of single women. If women will not accept marriage with subjugation, nor men proffer it without, there is, there can be, no alternative. The woman who will not be ruled must live without marriage."^[220]

Views on abortion

Anthony showed little interest in the topic of abortion. Ann D. Gordon, who led the Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Papers project, an undertaking to collect and document materials written by those two co-workers, said that Anthony "never voiced an opinion about the sanctity of fetal life ... and she never voiced an opinion about using the power of the state to require that pregnancies be brought to term."^[221] Lynn Sherr, author of a biography of Anthony, said that Anthony never stated her views on abortion, saying, "I looked desperately for some kind of evidence one way or the other as to what her position was, and it just wasn't there."^[221]

A dispute over Anthony's views on abortion developed after 1989 when some members of the anti-abortion movement began to portray Anthony as "an outspoken critic of abortion",^[222] citing various statements they said she had made. The anti-abortion advocacy group Susan B. Anthony List named itself after her on this basis. Gordon, Sherr and others contested this portrayal, saying these statements either were not made by Anthony, were not about abortion, or had been taken out of context.^{[223][224][225]}

Halls of Fame

In 1950, Anthony was inducted into the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. A bust of her that was sculpted by Brenda Putnam was placed there in 1952.^[226][227]

In 1973, Anthony was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.^[228]

Artwork

Hester C. Jeffrey, who spoke at Anthony's funeral and arranged the creation of a stained glass window as Anthony's first memorial.

The first memorial to Anthony was established by African Americans. In 1907, a year after Anthony's death, a stained-glass window was installed at the African Methodist Episcopal Zion church in Rochester that featured her portrait and the words "Failure is Impossible", a quote from her that had become a watchword for the women's suffrage movement. It was installed through the efforts of Hester C. Jeffrey, the president of the Susan B. Anthony Club, an organization of African American women in Rochester.^[229] Speaking at the window's dedication, Jeffrey said, "Miss Anthony had stood by the Negroes when it meant almost death to be a friend of the colored people."^[230] This church had a history of involvement in issues of social justice: in 1847, Frederick Douglass printed the first editions of The North Star, his abolitionist newspaper, in its basement.^[231]

Portrait Monument, a statue of Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol Building. Created by Adelaide Johnson in 1920.

Anthony is commemorated along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott in the Portrait Monument sculpture by Adelaide Johnson at the United States Capitol, unveiled in 1921. Originally kept on display in the crypt of the US Capitol, the sculpture was moved to its current location and more prominently displayed in the rotunda in 1997.^[232]

Leila Usher, next to the bas-relief of Susan B. Anthony she donated to the National Woman's Party.^[233]

In 1922, sculptor Leila Usher donated a bas-relief of Susan B. Anthony to the National Woman's Party, which was installed at their headquarters near Washington, DC.^[234] Usher was also responsible for the creation of a similar bronze medallion donated to Bryn Mawr College in 1901.^[235][236]

A sculpture by Ted Aub commemorating the introduction of Anthony to Elizabeth Cady Stanton by Amelia Bloomer on May 12, 1851, was unveiled In 1999.^[237][238] Called "When Anthony Met Stanton", it consists of life-size bronze statues of the three women near Van Cleef Lake in Seneca Falls, New York, where the introduction occurred.^[238][237]

In 2001, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan, one of the world's largest, added a sculpture honoring Anthony and three other heroes of the twentieth century: Martin Luther King Jr., Albert Einstein, and Mahatma Gandhi.^[239]

An installation artwork by Judy Chicago called The Dinner Party, first exhibited in 1979, features a place setting for Anthony.^[240][241]

A bronze sculpture of a locked ballot box flanked by two pillars marks the place where Anthony voted in 1872 in defiance of laws that prohibited women from voting. Called the 1872 Monument, it was dedicated in August, 2009, on the 89th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment. Leading away from the 1872 Monument is the Susan B. Anthony Trail, which runs beside the 1872 Café, named for the year of Anthony's vote.

Near the Susan B. Anthony Museum and House is the "Let's Have Tea" sculpture of Anthony and Frederick Douglass created by Pepsy Kettavong.^[242]

On February 15, 2020, Google celebrated Anthony's 200th birthday with a Google Doodle.^[243]

Landmarks

Anthony's home in Rochester is a National Historic Landmark called the National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House.^[244] The house of her birth^[245] in Adams, Massachusetts, and her childhood home^[246] in Battenville, New York, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 2007, the new Frederick Douglass–Susan B. Anthony Memorial Bridge replaced the old Troup–Howell Bridge as the conveyor of expressway traffic on Interstate 490 through downtown Rochester.^[247]

Documentary projects

The Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Papers project was an academic undertaking to collect and document all available materials written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Anthony. The project began in 1982 and has since been ended.^[248][249]

In 1999, Ken Burns and others produced the television documentary Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony.^[250]

Banknotes, coins and stamps

Commemorative stamp of Susan B. Anthony issued in 1936.^[251]

The US Post Office issued its first postage stamp honoring Anthony in 1936 on the 16th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which ensured women's right to vote.^[251] A second stamp honoring Anthony was issued in April 1958.^[252]

U.S. dollar coin with image of Susan. B. Anthony

In 1979, the United States Mint began issuing the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin, the first US coin to honor a female citizen.^[253]

The US Treasury Department announced on April 20, 2016, that an image of Anthony would appear on the back of a newly designed $10 bill along with Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul. The original plan was for a woman to appear on the front of the $10 bill, with Anthony under consideration for that position. The final plan, however, calls for Alexander Hamilton, the first US Secretary of the Treasury, to retain his current position there. Designs for new $5, $10 and $20 bills will be unveiled in 2020 in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of American women winning the right to vote via the 19th Amendment.^[254][255]

Names of awards and organizations

Since 1970, the Susan B. Anthony Award is given annually by the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women to honor "grassroots activists dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls in New York City."^[256][257]

New York Radical Feminists, founded in 1969, was organized into small cells or "brigades" named after notable feminists of the past. The Stanton-Anthony Brigade was led by Anne Koedt and Shulamith Firestone.^[258]

In 1971, Zsuzsanna Budapest founded the Susan B. Anthony Coven #1 – the first feminist, women-only, witches' coven.^{[259][260][261][262]}

The Susan B. Anthony List is a non-profit organization that seeks to reduce and ultimately end abortion in the U.S.^[263]

Other

Susan B. Anthony's gravestone with “I voted” stickers on it

Susan B. Anthony Day is a commemorative holiday to celebrate the birth of Anthony and women's suffrage in the United States. The holiday is February 15—Anthony's birthday.^[264]

In 2016, Lovely Warren, the mayor of Rochester, put a red, white and blue sign next to Anthony's grave on the day after Hillary Clinton obtained the nomination at the Democratic National Convention. The sign stated, "Dear Susan B., we thought you might like to know that for the first time in history, a woman is running for president representing a major party. 144 years ago, your illegal vote got you arrested. It took another 48 years for women to finally gain the right to vote. Thank you for paving the way."^[265] The city of Rochester put pictures of the message on Twitter and requested that residents go to Anthony's grave to sign it.^[265]

Citations

Sources